Fast-Fold Poker Celebrates 5-Year Anniversary

This month marks five years since fast-fold poker made its debut with Rush Poker on Full Tilt.

Since that time, the copycats have come out in full force with similar names such as Blaze Poker, Speed Hold’em, Zone Poker,FastForward, Zoom Poker, Fast Poker, etc. You get the idea.

It is safe to say that fast-fold poker is now a staple of the online poker industry, providing impatient players with the option of being quickly jettisoned to a new table and a new hand when their starting hole cards are deemed unworthy of playing.

PokerScout.com reports that at present almost 45% of cash game action on Full Tilt takes place on Rush Poker tables. That presumably includes Adrenaline Rush, an even faster version of Rush Poker that Full Tilt unleashed one year ago. Adrenaline Rush allows a maximum of only four players per table and no post-flop betting.

Built for speed

Following the advent of Rush Poker on cash tables, it soon became an option for tournament players as well. More recently, the fast-paced craze has been extended to Sit ‘n Go action such as PokerStars’ Spin & Go.

Although Spin & Go variants are technically not the same as fast-fold poker because players never leave one table for another, one can certainly argue that the fast-fold concept is borrowed from in the fact that the hyper-turbo three-player Spin & Go action typically concludes in a matter of minutes.

While fast-fold poker remains popular, among a certain segment of players at least, analysis by PokerScout reveals that overall growth is slowing down. The phenomenon has perhaps reached its peak.

In any event, hats off to Full Tilt for creating an innovative concept that has changed the way many online poker players are playing the game. Five years is an incredible milestone, even if the Rush Poker tables were empty for about 1 and 1/2 of those years after Black Friday and until the site relaunched under new ownership.

Charles Rettmuller

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Charles has been an avid poker player for a number of years, both live and online. He holds a degree in journalism and previously worked as a reporter for a Chicago-based newspaper. Charles joined the PokerUpdate team in early 2012 and writes daily news articles for the site.